Category Archives: Issues

Inuksuit, University of Richmond, 2013 This wonderful piece by John Luther Adams shows how twenty-five years in Alaska have shaped his music and life. Adams details his quaint studio on a plot outside of Fairbanks. The shelves inside survey his development: musical writings by Henry Cowell, John Cage, and his mentor, Lou Harrison, scores by Stravinsky and […]

Kaka’ako, Honolulu, 2014 I took the train from Manhattan to Coney Island this past week. I enjoy riding the elevated lines for the peek at random acts of art. In my own city of D.C., I recently biked by a painting crew splotching over an especially cool tag. The effects of gentrification ripple out like a stone dropped […]

In these days of strong party feeling and of keenly-contested social and religious issues, it might perhaps be thought difficult to find a single question having a vital bearing upon national life and well-being on which all persons, no matter of what political party, or of what shade of sociological opinion, would be found to […]

Aside from envying badly, we are also at risk of admiring others in a way that prevents us from emulating them. Our respect can be so powerful that we are at risk of failing to see our heroes as people we might–in the best sense–steal from. A healthy relationship to one’s idols involves a sense […]

Sufjan Stevens mixes autobiography, religious fantasy, and regional history to create folk songs of grand proportions. I must have been sixteen that day in Cheapo Records in Minneapolis. I spotted the goofy album art in an ancient listening station: a man standing with a cigar, the Chicago skyline, Superman. The man invited me to “feel the Illinoise.” […]

The primary function of music is to remind the listener that he belongs to one certain part of the human race, comes from a certain region, belongs to a certain generation. The music of your place stands for everything that has ever happened to you when you were a kid, reminds you of what your […]

This list is for fun (and just my opinion). Many of my favorites hurtled from the orbit of obscurity, but, some didn’t exit the atmosphere. But hey, the cream doesn’t always float to the top. (And sometimes you have to mix metaphors.) I hope you discover a new favorite below and let me know what rocked your world in the […]